Distributed Proxy: A Design Pattern for the Incremental Development of Distributed Applications

Developing a distributed application is hard due to the complexity inherent to distributed communication. Moreover, distributed object communication technology is always changing, todays edge technology will become tomorrows legacy technology. This paper proposes an incremental approach to allow a divide and conquer strategy that copes with these problems. It presents a design pattern for distributed object communication. The proposed solution decouples distributed object communication from object speci c functionalities. It further decouples logical communication from physical communication. The solution enforces an incremental development process and encapsulates the underlying distribution mechanisms. The paper uses a stage-based design description which allow design description at a di erent level of abstraction than code.